Research On The Impact Of Organizational Context And Individual Characteristics On University Scientists' Engagement With Industry

With the development of social economy and the increasing competition,government and other relevant organizations started to recognize the role of universities in promoting central and local economic development.This also attracts scholarly attention to focus on university knowledge transfer.The current research on university knowledge transfer mainly focuses on commercialization.However,previous study found that the rate of successful commercialization is extremely low,and it only takes up a very limited share of university knowledge transfer.Accordingly,Scholars begin to pay attention on non-commercial knowledge transfer channels.These series of activities were named academic engagement by scholars.Although academic engagement has been widely considered playing an important role in university knowledge transfer,relevant research is quite inadequate.This present study aims to explore the influential mechanism of individual characteristics and organizational context on academic engagement.First,on the basis of extant literature and combining new institutionalism,social exchange theory and social cognitive theory,we construct the theory framework of this study including research questions of influence of organizational factors on academic engagement,moderating effects of individual factors on the relationship between organizational factors and academic engagement,influence of departmental quality on academic engagement and mediating effects of self-efficacy and intention on the relationship of organizational factors and academic engagement.In order to clearly describe research content,this study divides the theory framework into three sub-research questions and further put forward research hypotheses.Second,we collect data through questionnaire investigation and utilize statistics tools such as SPSS,HLM and STATA to check reliability and validity of measurements and research hypotheses.Finally,we discuss results,theory contributions and practical implications of this study.Main work and innovation of this study contain following points:(1)This paper puts forwards the theoretical model of interactive effect of individual and organizational factors on academic engagement,and then discovers that individual factors have moderating effects on the relationship between organizational factors and academic engagement.First,we study the influence of the third mission and policy support on academic engagement from the perspective of new institutionalism.On the basis of extant literature and new institutionalism,we divide university level factors into the third mission and policy support,and test theoretical model both by multilevel analysis and multiple regression analysis.Our results show that scientists perceiving their university as having a strong third mission or supportive policy are more active in academic engagement.This research result provides foundation for further research of the effect of Chinese university context on academic engagement and theoretical basis for managers enhancing academics' industrial engagement from organizational perspective.Second,we construct the theoretical model of moderating effect of individual factors(academic rank,industrial connection and previous experience)on the relationship between organizational factors and academic engagement.On the basis of direct effect of organizational factors on academic engagement and academic capitalism,we put forward that academic rank,industrial connection and previous experience have moderating effect on the relationship between organizational factors and academic engagement.This theoretical model is tested by both multilevel and multiple regression analysis.We find that the relationships between organizational factors and academic engagement are moderated by individual-level factors.Specifically,the third mission and supportive policy are more strongly associated with intra-individual differences in academic engagement for junior scientists,and for scientists with personal networks to industry or rich previous experience,and more weakly associated with intra-individual differences in academic engagement for senior scientists,and for scientists with no personal networks to industry or poor previous experience This research results not only deepen the influence of organizational factors and academic engagement and reveal the diversity of organizational context's effect on academic engagement between different academics group,but also provide practical evidences for managers to formulate differentiated policies for different scientists group.(2)This study focuses on the effect of departmental research quality on academic engagement under different discipline context and reveals that scientists' motivations have mediating effects on the realationship between departmental research quality and academic engagement.This research starts from ambiguous results in extant literature about the relationship between departmental quality and academic engagement.On the basis of social exchange theory,we put forward a theoretical model of mediating effects of commercial motivation and research-related motivation on the relationship between departmental quality and academic engagement under natural science and humanities and social science disciplines.We tested this theoretical model by multilevel analysis method.Our results show that in natural science disciplines,departmental academic quality is significant positively related to academic engagement,engagement motivations have a partially mediating effect on the relationship between departmental academic quality and industry engagement.In humanities and social science disciplines,departmental academic quality only significantly influences research-related motive and has inverted U-shaped relationships with research-related motive and industry engagement: departmental academic quality is positively related to research-related motive and industry engagement in low-quality department while negatively in highquality department;research-related motive has a partially mediating effect on the relationship between departmental academic quality and industry engagement both in low-quality department and high-quality department.Results of this research not only solve ambiguous point in extant literature but also provide practical evidence for managers to formulate specialized policies for different disciplines and departments with different research quality.(3)The third innovation point lies in that we put forward the theoretical model of effects of self-efficacy and intention on academic engagement and found that selfefficacy and scientists' intention to academic engagement have mediating effects on the relationships among organizational factors,individual factors and academic engagement.First,on the basis of social cognitive theory,we construct a theoretical model of the effect of organizational and individual factors on academic engagement through self-efficacy.This research analyzes the function of organizational and individual factors on shaping scientists' self-efficacy in industrial collaborations by the four sources of self-efficacy.We also explore the effect of scientists' self-efficacy on academic engagement.Our results show that self-efficacy has partly moderating effect on the relationship between organizational factors and academic engagement.In addition,we also verify that self-efficacy has moderating effect on the relationship between individual factors,which are gender,academic rank,industry networks and previous experience,and academic engagement.This result deepens research on effect of organizational and individual factors on academic engagement and provide practical value for managers to promote academic engagement through building scientists' selfefficacy.Second,we construct a theoretical model of mediating effect of scientists' intention to academic engagement on the relationship between organizational factors and academic engagement.On the basis of planned behavior theory,we expect that organizational factors can affect academic engagement through scientists' intention to academic engagement.Multilevel analysis method is used to test this theory model.Our results show that organizational factors have significant effect on scientists' intention to academic engagement,and scientists' intention to academic engagement has partly moderating effect on the relationship between organizational factors and academic engagement.This research both enrich research on relationship between organizational factors and academic engagement and provide evidence for managers to promote academic knowledge transfer through enhancing scientists' intention to academic engagement.